So Many Memories
by Meetredmeat
Summary: A look at various events in the life of Integra and Alucard and how their complex relationship has changed over the years. AxI, in later chapters. Rated teen for later chapters, just to be safe. This is my first fanfic, please be nice! .
1. A Girl and Her Father

**Yes, I'm aware that the name is rather crappy, but I can't think of anything truly suitable. Rawrgh!**

**This series of disconnected chapters illustrates my view into Alucard and Integra's complex relationship throughout the time the actual storyline takes place and mentions. Every chapter represents a different aspect of their relationship (pretty easy to guess, cuz of their titles =P). It's about 11 at night where I am right now, so if you see any grave grammatical errors, they'll get fixed, don't worry. Enough of my blabbering, let's get to the story!  
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The little 12-year old girl always tried hard to be on her best behavior all the time, but it was sometimes difficult. All the other Knights of the Round Table were old men, well into their 30's and 40's. Her faithful butler, Walter, watched over her during meetings, but it didn't stop the feeling of being left out and sometimes uncomfortable. He was unable to speak for her or giver her advice, so she often felt alone among the adults.

After a particularly lovely evening discussing a werewolf uprising in Wales, the little girl wandered up to her room. There, she picked up a small picture of herself and an older man from the dresser. "Father," she began. She removed her glasses to wipe a tear away, sparing it from a great fall. "Why must you be gone? I miss you more than ever and I feel so lost without your guidance."

"Master, if I may say so, you always have me." She gasped and whirled around to see her vampire standing behind her.

"As your servant, I must watch over you and care for you."

"That is true, vampire," she replied in her strongest, most commanding voice. But the quivering betrayed her façade. The vampire smiled gently. "I'm here for you. I wasn't there for my wife, so I will be there for my master." The little girl looked down. Her face was flushed. "Don't call me that," she whispered. A quizzical look came over the vampire's face. "Then what shall I call you?"

"I don't know," she whispered, her head still down. His shadows reached out to her in a consolidating move. She did nothing to shoo them away and let them glide soothingly over her shoulders. "It's such a… barbaric word." She narrowed her big blue eyes at 'barbaric' and put her glasses back on. "But what am I to you, if I'm not… that? I'm so confused. Not just about this, but everything. Why me?" She slumped down to the floor, still clutching the photo to her chest. The shadows followed her movements and gently took the photo away, putting it back on the dresser. Her head was in her hands as she sighed.

"I'll be here for you no matter who you are," his voice insisted. She looked up briefly from underneath her glasses and tried her best to give an appreciating little smile. The vampire's face suddenly turned solemn. "It's the least I can do to make up for last time." He closed his blood red eyes sadly. "Fighting the Turks left me no time for my dear wife. It seemed I was always gone, off fighting some war that, in the end, didn't even matter. Then-" He stopped abruptly. The little girl looked up to see his head bowed. But underneath the raven hair that hung in front of his white, flawless face, she saw the grimace that twisted it.

"Then," he continued, "I came back one night to find she had- had died." He stopped once more, but this time she granted him privacy of his emotions and didn't look up. "I don't remember very much of that night. I must have laid right there on the floor next to her for an eternity until the priests took that beautiful body away."

The girl was still too young and inexperienced to be moved by a story of the loss of a spouse, but she did say "I'm sorry." The vampire looked up and smiled weakly. "Don't be. Nothing was your fault. It was all mine, being an unfaithful husband. But this time I won't be so preoccupied with my affairs that I neglect you." He stood, leaned over and hugged her, picking her right up off the floor. She giggled through her red, swollen eyes now smiling. He smiled back and put her down. As she was straightening out her skirt and fixing her hair and glasses, he suddenly exclaimed, making his shadows recoil, "That is who you are! Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing!" He held his arms out with lighthearted grandeur.

"Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing," she repeated, putting her hands on her hips proudly. "Thank you Alucard," she said, giving him a hug around the waist and smiling, finally as a contented child would.

"You're welcome, Integra."


	2. Best Friends

Walter and Integra arrived home from school. Integra hadn't said a word the whole way and Walter decided not to push his luck by pressing for details. She got out of the car and stalked inside the sprawling mansion.

There, in her room, she lay on her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. A dark mass accumulated in the corner and approached her.

"Hello, Alucard," she said blandly.

"What is it, Integra?" he asked, cutting to the chase. She sighed impatiently but spoke.

"I'm 17 and I still feel so left out in school. Everyone knows each other and they don't pay much notice to me. Either that or they're making fun of me, thinking I'm obscenely rich, because they've seen Walter and the car."

"But you are."

"I just wish they didn't know," she snapped. Alucard didn't absorb the shock of her harsh tone and pressed on. "Is there something you'd like to tell me? I promise to not tell Walter." Integra considered the offer and accepted. "There's somebody I'm interested in." Alucard's expression hardened ever so slightly, but he said "that's good."

"Not really," Integra began. "I could never approach him." She scowled bitterly. Alucard sat down on her bed next to her, facing towards the window. "Why not?" Integra sighed and rolled onto her side so that her back was facing Alucard's. "He's so popular with all the girls, except me of course, and what on earth would he think of the strange orphan girl who lives on the top of the hill with the strange people who come and go and the armed guards that stand at the gates? I want to be just like any normal British teenager."

Alucard looked out the window for a moment, trying to remember his own years as a human teenager. All he could really remember was the vulgar sense of humor that he and his friends had developed. He closed his eyes, trying to forget about those years. Finally, he spoke. "Perhaps you are simply trying to be something you're not." His thought was only rewarded with a humph. "Can't I be whoever I want to be though?" she asked.

"You are Integra Hellsing, and you can be whoever you want. But it would be at a heavy price. Right now, the world needs a leader of the Hellsing organization. You and I are obligated to fill that need." He turned his head to look at her, but she was still facing away. "You'll have time for love of that sort down the road a ways," he added with consolidation and a pat on Integra's shoulder. He sensed her scowl. "Why me?" She finally mumbled.

"Because you are my master." He wasn;t sure what to expect as a response from the girl, since it had been somewhere around five years since the word 'master' was used. But Integra's expression loosened. "So I am," she mused.

"It's who you truly are," Alucard said to her, turning fully to face her. "If you weren't, I wouldn't be here. I would still be in that cell in the dungeon, dying of thrist."

Integra now turned toward him. "I suppose you are right, vampire," she said with a blossoming newfound strength. Alucard's smile exhibited satisfaction and tingling at being addressed that way.

"Now, what are your orders, my master?" he asked with a genuine, vampiric grin.

**A/N: forgive me, this chapter is rawther short. They aren't all this way though.**

**Just as a heads-up, the next chapter will be kinda mushy. :)**


	3. Master and Servant

London lay in ruins around Integra's figure. Flames swallowed entire buildings as its brother, smoke, swallowed the stars and the red moon. Alucard's form could be seen flashing from here to there, fountains of blood following after.

"That will be all, vampire," said her cool voice. Alucard returned to his master's side, bowing with a knee on the ground. "You've done well, Alucard," she said without looking down at him.

"Thank you, my master," he muttered with satisfaction. He rose up to his full, towering height and silently followed Integra down the street full of corpses piled higher than the vampire's head. Alucard came forward and let Integra take his arm. "We walk the roads of Hell, now," he said with a smirk. Integra only scowled and said nothing. "How does it feel, master, to walk in Hell?"

"Alucard!! Is that any way to talk about the once great city of London?!" Integra shouted almost hysterically at him with the annoyance that had been building up. But Alucard merely smiled and apologized in that manner that always bordered dangerously close to taunting, but wasn't exactly respectful, either. "I'm sorry, master."

"Hmph."

The two walked a ways more until Alucard froze. He made no movement; not even his eyes shifted. Integra knew better than to make a noise so much as a footstep. She only gripped his arm tightly. Suddenly, all within less than a split second, Alucard bared his long fangs, hissed, and charged a freak who had tried to ambush the pair. Integra's grip on him was instantly broken as he shot off to the side of the road. In the other half of the second he had drawn his dual handguns and taken a shot at the undead nazi. It dodged the shot, much to Alucard's annoyance. However it would only take a few well-planned shots to bring this enemy down. Anticipating the freak's movements, which was by no means difficult for a larger, stronger and older vampire, Alucard fired three shots. The nazi had come within yards of Integra, but he now lay dead on the bloody, cracked pavement, his now silenced corpse fully visible in the light of the nearby fires. The woman's face bore no effect of the attack, but Alucard sensed her hand shaking on the hilt of the silver sword in its sheath.

"I thank you, servant," she said calmly. Alucard approached her and gently removed the quivering hand from its spot to kiss the top of it. "It is my duty and my pleasure to serve you, my master," he muttered into her hand, which was still held to his lips. Normally, being this… absorbed would have been too risky, but Alucard's senses, still heightened from the rush of resisting the ambush, told him there weren't any more freaks around.

He carefully turned her gloved hand over and felt the delicate, thin fingers with his own larger, thicker ones. He had always admired these lean and nimble hands that so swiftly pulled the blade from her side and drove a car with extreme precision; the same hands that ordered an attack as well as provided for him. He felt the knife scars underneath her white glove and slowly traced them. He looked up to see a pair of placid blue eyes looking gently back at his own pools of deep red. Of course, it was too good, too peaceful, to last.

"Shall we carry on, Sir Integra?" he suddenly said, ruining the moment he had meticulously built himself. Integra's face became hard and battle-weary once more. "Of course, vampire." She reached for his arm and the continued down the street of Hell that they had managed to escape for a few moments.

**A/N: Awww, how cute!**

**Next chapter soon!  
**


	4. Equilibrium

**A/N: just as a warning, this part is pretty AxI-ish. It also contains the 4-letter D word. :P If you'd prefer to skip over this chapter, feel free to do so.**

Nothing in the Hellsing manor moved that night, save the candles whose flames flickered in the halls that remained without electricity. Even Integra's pen, usually busy scrawling notes, letters and other things pertaining to work, lay silent. Its owner sat in her leather desk chair with her legs outstretched beneath the kneehole of the cherry wood desk. Her head was supported by her fist, whose elbow leaned upon the arm of the chair. Her eyes were closed, but she frowned with phantom concentration. The vampires, she thought, were most likely off chasing something that had caught their attention, leaving her some time to herself.

So naturally it wasn't a surprise that Integra jumped when a flare of cold air rushed past her from behind, rousing her from her light sleep.

"Alucard!" she exclaimed out of instinct. "Why-" The vampire standing behind her smirked. "I only do these sorts of things to make your blood boil, you know. It's easy to do and quite entertaining." He strolled around to face Integra at the front of her desk. She was glaring, which only delighted the vampire.

"Alucard, I swear. You can be so cheeky." She rubbed her tired eyes and set her glasses back in place. Alucard chuckled at his master, eliciting another glare from her. "At least you weren't soundly asleep," he offered. Integra could only cover her face with her gloved fingers and sigh with defeat at the hands of her own cheeky vampire. But from beneath the white hand emerged a smile playing just at the edges of her mouth.

"Master…?" Alucard had not anticipated this sort of reaction. Her smile became bigger until she looked up at him, humorous defeat on her face. Alucard's brow furrowed with curiosity and he cast a sideways gaze at her.

"You," she began, a chuckle behind the word, "are so infuriating, you know that? So damn infuriating." Alucard was now very confused, but he didn't show it. He had not seen an Integra like this since she was very young, but he decided to go along with it anyway, enjoying how lighthearted she was. "Pushing your buttons is what I do best," he grinned.

Integra smiled at him through sleepy eyes. She felt exhaustion overtaking her… or perhaps it was Alucard's presence. He had a way with the frail minds of humans, even his master's. She was truly at ease for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. She gazed at him, his strong and willowy frame standing tall but remembering who was really in control. His shadowy hair fell mischievously over his ruby eyes and casted a shadow on his white fangs and pasty skin. It really was flawless, just as the books on vampires said. It was so smooth and soft-looking… _What am I doing?!_ She thought. She sometimes thought about him in a romantic way, but she had never felt this attracted to him. It intimidated her. Was she really falling for a vampire?

Alucard had been listening to her thoughts again and slowly approached her, his smile fading gradually. She stood up and the two looked solemnly at one another in total silence until Alucard took a deep breath- his first in many years- and closed his eyes. He let his arms embrace Integra, nearly knocking her over with sheer strength. She gasped at the impact, but after a moment she carefully put her arms around him.

His rough overcoat smelled of spent gunpowder, but she didn't mind. It smelled good to her. For a moment she felt him breathe, and she closed her eyes. He was radiating heat- a vivid heat full of life, contrasting with his normal stone cold aura. This was her vampire. Hers and nobody else's.

She smelled of bath powder and cigars, a delicate balance of femininity and masculine strength. He didn't want to let go of her. She was _his_ human, the last connection to the living world that he had, his last strand of humanity. He hugged her protectively, surrounding her and letting her sink into his chest, just as one would protect from the world the one he loved.

Alucard carefully loosened Integra's grip on him and held her shoulders. His expression puzzled the young woman. It looked pained, but was full of love. He stroked her neck with his thumb and her eyelids sank. Quickly he leaned in and gave her a kiss. Not a quick, rushed one, but a sweet, tender one. It couldn't have been longer than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to the ancient vampire. Finally he broke away and looked shamefully down at the floor. "Forgive me for being so impulsive, master," he mumbled, expecting her to shout or push him away.

Integra found a lump forming in her throat at her servant's words. "Don't be." She held him close, as if he would dissipate at any given moment. "Don't be." Alucard said nothing in reply and stood still as she drew a breath. "You aren't a servant and I am not a master… no, not right now. Not like this."

He lightly rested his chin on the top of her head and ran his fingers through her white gold hair. He felt the need to breathe again. He knew this moment wouldn't last forever, but for now, he was alive.


End file.
